Test It.
“The fact that the few theories we can test have produced quite poor results suggests that many of the ideas we haven’t tested are very wrong as well. We are undoubtedly living with many delusions that we do not even realize.”
Test Case #1: Before construction, Children’s Hospital in Troy Michigan created a warehouse sized mock-up of their new facility layout. Nurses who knew the flow of work better than the architects identified a “missing” door connecting an office and a lab without which multiple daily trips down two hallways were avoided. The door, and dozens of other changes, was added easily and without extra construction costs.
Test Case #2: A large staffing and recruiting firm fully converted to a new ERP system only to have to uninstall it and return to the previous system after spending many millions of dollars and years of effort. Executives failed to anticipate the daily burden of the many extra processing steps the new system forces in key repetitive tasks.
OUR PROBLEM is not that we lack useful ideas. It is the abundance of untested ideas that get implemented. The worst thing that can be done is to believe, like the executives at the staffing and recruiting firm, that a good idea developed by a group of smart people in a meeting room is an idea ready for prime time. Every test, even simple ones, provides opportunities for learning that can prevent bigger problems in the future.
➡ Embedding any of the following testing methods in PLAN-DO-STUDY-ACT learning and improvement cycles will accelerate your knowledge gains and likelihood of success.
✅ Pilot Programs. Implement a small-scale version of the change
✅ A/B Testing. Compare two versions of a change to see which performs better
✅ Simulation. Use virtual models to test changes in a risk-free environment
✅ Storyboarding. Create visual narratives of new processes or changes
✅ Process Mapping. Visualize and study the steps in a new process
✅ Rapid Prototyping. Simplicity makes it easier for people to feel ok about making changes
✅ Mock-ups. Build physical or digital representations
✅ Role-playing. Act out scenarios
